Camera Control in UI

[droomurray]

Rob,

Thanks for viofosync — it's a really nice piece of work, and it's become the way I manage my A329S footage.

I've opened PR #21 with a feature you might consider merging: a Camera tab and /api/camera/* endpoints to read and adjust the dashcam's own settings over Wi-Fi (parking mode, watermarks, HDR, LEDs, GPS, loop length, bitrate, etc.), alongside the existing sync/browse/export features.

How it was built — I wanted the mapping to be grounded rather than guessed, so it came together in three stages:

1. Firmware analysis. I statically analysed the A329S firmware (the cardv binary on the Novatek NA51102) to confirm the undocumented netapp HTTP grammar — http://<cam>/?custom=1&cmd=<id>&par=<value> with XML replies, the cmd=3014 settings dump, and the rough command-id ranges. That gave the protocol shape but not what each id means.

2. App decompilation. To get real semantics I decompiled the official VIOFO Android app (apkeep → jadx) and found it ships a SQLite asset (device-cmd-manager.db) that maps every command id to a key, description, and option enumeration, per camera model. I reformatted just that factual API data into command_map.json — the app's .db itself is NOT redistributed, and scripts/build_command_map.py regenerates it. This is what powers the per-setting option labels in the UI.

3. Automated testing against a real camera. I then wrote a harness that drives the actual web API and round-trips every setting against my A329S — read current value, write a different valid value, confirm it applied by re-reading the camera's live config, then restore the original — exporting the full settings dump before and after to prove nothing was left changed. That empirical pass is where the safety behaviour came from: it's how I found that some "reads" are actually destructive actions (a bare cmd=3010 is format SD, and 3013 wedges the daemon), which settings are silently rejected while recording (so the layer briefly stops/restarts recording for those), and which simply can't be set over Wi-Fi (resolution) or need a lens that isn't attached.

The result of all that is baked into the safeguards:

• Destructive commands (format, factory reset, firmware update, delete, reboot, restart-Wi-Fi, SSD format/delete) are on a hard denylist — refused before any request is built and never shown in the UI. Writes are allow-listed to enumerated settings, validated against the camera's own option list, and read back to verify. One request at a time so it won't overrun the camera's single-threaded daemon.
• Honest about limits. Settings the camera won't change over Wi-Fi (resolution, exposure) or that need an unattached lens are shown read-only with the reason, and the lens-dependent ones re-enable automatically when the rear/interior camera is connected.
• Tests + docs. Offline unit tests (no hardware needed) for the denylist/validation/verify logic, plus a README section.

One thing I'd flag for your call: that derived command map is reformatted from VIOFO's app data — if you'd rather handle it differently, I'm happy to change it. And it's only been validated against my A329S; other models are mapped from the app data but untested, so it'd benefit from others trying it.

No pressure at all to merge — your project, your call. Happy to adjust anything (squash, trim the data file, rework the UI to match your conventions, whatever helps).

[RobXYZ]

Thanks for the PR! It looks like a great implementation and extracting the db from the app is an excellent way to build the command list. Hopefully Viofo retain the same app so it’s simple to import new models and commands in going forward!

I’ve not read the changes in detail and I need to test on my A229 Pro but all being well I can’t see a reason not to merge this.

[droomurray]

If you can point me to the A229 firmware I can try and check compatibility.

[RobXYZ]

The standard A229 Pro firmware is on https://viofotech.com/download/firmware/A229Pro/FWA229P.bin

Does the Android app db contain commands for all models?

[droomurray]

I checked this against the A229 Pro firmware (VIOFO_A229P_V1.5_251222), since that's your test camera — it looks compatible, so you'd be able to validate it on your own hardware.

What I verified (statically, against the firmware + the command map):

• Same protocol. The A229P firmware has the same netapp interface — custom=1, cmd=%d, the cardv daemon, the <Function>/<Status> XML grammar, Novatek NA51 SoC. Nothing camera-specific in the transport.
• Model is mapped + auto-detected. A229P is in the command map (99 commands), and detect_model("VIOFO_A229P_…") resolves to A229P correctly (longest-match, so it beats a bare A229).
• Reads line up. The commands the control layer uses for reads — 3012 system info, 3014 settings dump, 3017 free space, 3024 card status, 8260 sensor count — all map identically.
• Destructive denylist holds. 3010 format, 3011 factory reset, 3018 restart-wifi, 3023 remove-user, 4003 delete, 8230 reboot all mean the same on the A229P; the SSD ones (9316/9317) are simply absent (no SSD slot), so blocking them is harmless.

Honest caveats:

• It's only been validated end-to-end on my A329S — the A229P side is static analysis only, untested live.
• A couple of the "can't change over Wi-Fi" / "needs a lens" labels were derived from A329S testing (e.g. resolution 8222, exposure 8220 are shown read-only). The A229 Pro might actually allow some of those, so worst case it under-offers a setting that would in fact work. Those hints are fail-safe — they only ever gray a control out or briefly pause recording, and they don't touch the safety guarantees (which are command-ID based and identical across both models). If you find one that should be editable on the A229 Pro, it's a one-line change to scope that hint to the A329S.

So if you spin it up against your A229 Pro and hit anything that reads back wrong or shows as read-only when it shouldn't, let me know the command id and I'll adjust the per-model handling.

[droomurray]

Yes — within VIOFO's current lineup. The app's device-cmd-manager.db carries commands for 29 models, which is effectively every current/recent VIOFO dashcam:

A119 M2CD, A119 MINI, A119 MINI2, A119M Pro, A129, A129Plus, A129Pro, A139, A139P, A149, A229, A229P, A229PT, A229S, A229U, A329, A329S, A329SW, A329T, A329TC, A329WW, G1W-S, MT1, S330, S340, T130, VS1, WM1, WR1

Each model has its own command set (e.g. A329S = 122 commands, A229P = 99) since features differ per camera.

Caveat: it's "all models the current app supports," not literally every camera ever made — a model too old to be in the app, or newer than this app build, wouldn't be there until the map is regenerated from an updated APK.

[RobXYZ]

Thanks again for your work on this. As you've probably seen, I’ve merged it into the latest release with some minor tweaks and carried your nice looking toggle switches through the rest of the app.